Samsung plans range of Tizen handsets, Android Wear smartwatch and new Galaxy Note this year

by
Alistair Charlton4/16/2014 10:18:42 AM

4/16/2014 10:18:42 AM

The Galaxy S5 is already outselling the year-old S4, according to Samsung, which plans to launch a Tizen phone and an Android Wear smartwatch later this year, along with an updated Galaxy Note.

Speaking to Reuters, Yoon Han-kil, Samsung’s senior vice president of product strategy, said the S5 “is selling faster than the S4 so far...S5 sales should be much better than the S4.”

Although he did not share specific numbers, Yoon claimed the S5 will sell “significantly more” units than the 10 million S4s Samsung shifted in its first month on sale last year.

We crammed a lot into the S4

Yoon also revealed some of his company’s thinking behind the S5, and specifically its plan to make the handset simpler to use than the S4 by removing some software features and applications. “With the S4, we thought smartphones shouldn’t just focus on hardware, They also had to come with a lot of software and service, and that line of thinking did lead us to cram many services into the device.

“We still feel the same way but this time around, we decided not to put in so many things and only include what the user really needs, so I cut out a lot of services and software.”

Yoon said Samsung plans to launch at least two smartphones running the company’s own Tizen operating system, currently used by the new Gear 2 and Gear Fit smartwatches.

Samsung will launch a high-end Tizen handset around the end of the second quarter (June), followed by a second model aimed at the mid-market later in the year.

The company wants to build an ecosystem that doesn’t rely on Google and Android, although Yoon admitted Android “still needs to be our main business” and said Samsung will launch an Android Wear-based smartwatch later this year.

Finally, Yoon said an updated Galaxy Note phablet with a “new form factor” will arrive in the second half of 2014. Samsung is expected to launch a new Note at the IFA technology show in Berlin in early September.